Scaling to 1000 employees

Consolidated four separate hiring processes into a single efficient workflow

Atom Group plans to expand its workforce to 1,000 by 2022. To
meet that recruitment need, it has recently implemented Hire to
recruit across its four businesses.

Atom Group is a global pioneer in the
drinks industry, encompassing the entire life cycle of spirit
production, from brand development to retail sales. In 2017, it was
the only spirits company listed in the Sunday Times Virgin Fast
Track 100, a national league table that ranks the top 100 private
British companies with the fastest-growing sales over the past three
years.

Atom disrupts the drinks industry with three separate businesses:
Atom Brands, Maverick Drinks, and Master of Malt, all supported by a
fourth business support function, Atom Nucleus.

Atom Brands is the hub for drinks development. As a producer of
world-class spirits brands, Atom Brands was named the IWSC Gin
Producer of the Year and The Spirits Business magazine’s Grand
Spirits Master in 2017.

Maverick Drinks is a distributor for the UK's finest spirits. Its
focus on quality led to Maverick Drinks being named the IWSC Spirits
Distributor of the Year in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Master of Malt is the leading online spirits retailer, carrying a
wide range of distinguished whiskies from around the world, exciting
gins, fine spirits, cocktail ingredients, and more. For six out of
the past seven years, Master of Malt has been named Whisky
Magazine's global online retailer of the year.

In 2018, every Atom Group business unit was in growth. It was an
incredibly exciting time, with commercially successful innovation
flowing right across the company. Atom Brands had significant
momentum behind its product portfolio, increasing numbers of
third-party brands wanted to work with Maverick Drinks, and Master
of Malt continued to win new customers through its relentless focus
on service and product offering. To truly harness the potential of
all the activity, the team needed to grow, and fast. From the 160
employees at the start of 2018, Atom Group set the target to grow to
1,000 people by 2022. To make this rapid growth possible, the
company needed a new system to upscale recruitment and ensure
organised, efficient, and fast-moving processes.

Handling a team’s worth of admin

At the beginning of 2017, Atom's hiring needs were less urgent. With
no more than five open job positions at any time, the company
managed to operate with a cumbersome hiring process—uploading every
resume submitted into a separate Google Document before passing it
on to the hiring manager to review, reject applicants, or request
interviews as required.

This system worked until Atom set greater hiring targets. Growing to
1,000 people meant hiring six or seven people per week. The manual
process of uploading resumes for that many positions was no longer
feasible.

“We already know that Google Hire is just so much more efficient.
Before, we would be copying and pasting emails, individually
contacting every single candidate who applied to let them know their
hiring outcome”

We already know that Google Hire is just so much more efficient.
Before, we would be copying and pasting emails, individually
contacting every single candidate who applied to let them know their
hiring outcome

Marina Warren

Head of People at Atom Group

“It was inefficient and cumbersome” said Marina Warren, Atom's Head
of People. “Flurries of emails were coming in every night - about
120 applicants. Someone would have to sit there and cut and paste
the details into a spreadsheet.”

Marina was left with two options; doubling Atom’s recruiting team to
help manage the manual process of copying and pasting applications
and emailing candidates or having a slow recruitment service. Worse
still, the process of sharing resumes through Google Docs was
flawed: hiring managers were forgetting to check resumes, even
accidentally deleting items or making unwanted changes.

As a technology-driven company, Atom opted to find a hiring tool
specifically developed to handle this administrative work as well as
to engage new employees quickly. A main priority was to keep things
efficient. There was also a cultural aspect to their choice; Atom
are heavily focused on user experience and were drawn to Google who
shared this value. The company was already working through Google
Docs and Gmail, so liked the idea of using Google's dedicated
applicant tracking system – Hire by Google – to manage the hiring
process.

“We already know that Google Hire is just so much more efficient.
Before, we would be copying and pasting emails, individually
contacting every single candidate who applied to let them know their
hiring outcome,” said Marina. “With Hire by Google, the team can
complete all of that with the touch of a button. It's done in
seconds.”

By setting up Hire by Google, Atom fixed its cumbersome recruiting
process while saving significant time and resources in the process.

Providing a fast onboarding process

Atom was already using G Suite before adopting Hire, so the team has
been able to integrate Hire into its workflow quickly and
seamlessly. As well as recruiters and the People Team, hiring
managers are using Hire extensively, and so far it's proved easy for
everyone to use. “We haven't really needed to roll out any
training,” said Elaina Griffiths, Recruiting Manager at Atom.
“Adding new users involves a couple of clicks and onboarding takes a
few minutes, because the system is so intuitive. We have set up a
candidate workflow to match our recruiting process, so it is simple
and logical for hiring managers to follow. You review an
application, and can simply click ‘yes’ or ‘no’... It's very, very
easy.”

Consolidating four separate hiring processes

In addition to setting the goal to grow its team to 1,000 employees,
Atom has another hiring challenge – recruiting across four separate
businesses simultaneously.

“The ability to publish and update roles directly from Hire by
Google and automatically update the Atom Group careers pages – four
separate websites – has been a big win for us,” said Elaina. “It
cuts out a huge job for our web developers.”

Besides removing the technical challenges of this integration, Hire
makes it easier for Atom to assess the wide variety of candidates
across all four businesses. “We're hiring for all areas of the
Group, from customer service representatives to software developers
and sales. And since we're a drinks company, we're hiring into
industry-specific, niche roles too, in functions such as liquid
production” added Elaina.

Hire offers us the ability to auto-scan any CV and to create,
populate and review a candidate profile quickly

Michael Munroe

People Operations & Data Manager at Atom Group

Atom has been able to review each of these diverse candidate types
with Hire's CV-scanning feature. “This enables the team to
auto-scan any CV and populate information into their profile, for
example, work history, contact details, and education history,”
said Michael Munroe, People Operations and Data Manager at Atom.
“It quickly gives us a top-level view of each candidate.”

On track for rapid growth

After a few months of using Hire by Google, Atom's hiring process
is organised and streamlined. Instead of manually copying and
pasting applications, Atom now uses Hire to handle the
administrative side of recruitment across its four businesses. As
a result, Atom has more time to focus on improving its candidate
experience, enhancing brand advocacy with quicker time to attract
and hire, and reaching its target of growing to 1,000 employees
over the next few years.

“Before implementing Hire by Google, candidates were falling
through the cracks of a manual process,” said Elaina. “Since
moving to Hire, every application is acknowledged and hiring
managers are able to screen and share feedback efficiently,
enabling faster responses, greater levels of candidate care and a
smoother recruiting process for all involved.”